Peter Hill

Award-winning journalist and former editor of the Daily Express

Teaching Mandarin would be waste of time and resource

MILLIONS of pounds will be spent teaching children in state schools to speak Mandarin, described by the Government as "the language of the future" despite being one of the world's oldest and most obscure.

There are plans to train 1,300 teachers who will instruct tens of thousands of pupils.

I can't think of a bigger waste of time, effort and money. Modern languages are seldom taught well in British schools. Many of us attempt rudimentary French and Spanish but hope our listener will rescue us by speaking English. I hear a lot of foreign speech on buses and Tube trains and Chinese is easily the most impenetrable.

Mandarin in any case is only one of many dialects spoken in China so even if you get an A* you might be unable to communicate. More important, millions of Chinese students are desperately learning English because, contrary to Government thinking, the world language of the future is so obviously English.

It is already the language of aviation and business. I have been watching the French Open tennis tournament and after-match interviews with the players are conducted not in French but in English and if the umpires have to explain anything they do it in English. I attended a session of the European Court in Strasbourg last year, all conducted in English.

Instead of feebly teaching British children languages they will hardly use, schools should concentrate on science, maths, engineering, computing and, crucially, English. That's the only way we will be competitive.

THIS brings me to the subject of translators, now an industry itself. Local authorities and courts spend enormous sums on translators and printing documents in the scores of tongues spoken in multi-ethnic Britain.

Last week £3,000 was spent hiring three translators in the trial of a Lithuanian immigrant accused of stealing two 10p plastic bags. At one point a Latvian speaker was sent by mistake at a cost of £200 an hour.

The man, who has no job and is penniless, has been jailed at taxpayers' expense and no doubt more money will be wasted in a failed attempt to deport him.

The authorities in Britain go far beyond reasonable expectations to cater for foreigners. If visitors need translators it should be their own responsibility to pay for them.

No wonder people think Ed Miliband is a loon

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I WROTE last week in praise of Danny Alexander as the best choice to lead the Lib Dems and what does he do but make a complete ass of himself telling fellow Scots that voting no to independence will enable them to afford fish and chips every day for 10 weeks or 280 hotdogs a year.

Let's accept it was Danny's wacky way of illustrating how much better off Scotland will be sticking with the Union, but not everyone shares his sense of humour. It looks crassly patronising. Why not say they could afford to eat x amounts of caviar, foie gras or tortoises' tongues in aspic or how many three-star Michelin suppers they might indulge in?

I'm sorry, Danny, you've talked yourself out of the top job and probably handed Alex Salmond a few thousand more supporters, you daft pollock.

WHEN it comes to daftness you'd have to go a long way to find anything as ridiculous as Labour's latest policy initiative - free marriage guidance courses for every couple in the land. No wonder people think Ed Miliband is a loon.

I'm sure we could all do with a spot of counselling here and there but I don't expect nanny state to provide it. I would rather the estimated £110million a year cost of the scheme be devoted to a more worthwhile project, such as improving A&E departments.

Labour politicians can't resist blowing our money on ways to interfere more with our lives. If they win next year's general election one thing is certain: taxes will rocket. And since there are more non-contributors to the nation's finances than payers and millions of Tory voters deserting to Ukip it's hard to see how Labour can fail.

THAT the nanny state exists is all too evident. A Norfolk couple were arrested by police and thrown into the cells last week for having an 11-year-old son who weighs 15 stone. So now obesity is officially a crime and the official definition of obesity being a touch on the puritanical side this means virtually the entire population is clinically and criminally fat.

I see the day coming when the fat police round up citizens by the tens of thousands, imprison us in vast boot camps and put us on a diet of cabbage soup. You laugh but...

A NEW search is to be launched for Moors Murders victim Keith Bennett, who disappeared 50 years ago at the age of 12. Experts are concentrating on three areas of Saddleworth Moor where it is thought Keith and three other children were buried by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

Is it not time to drop this futile quest? Keith's mother anguished for decades about her poor son but died in 2012 still not knowing where his remains lie. What purpose can be served by prolonging the agony?

I was brought up at the foot of Saddleworth Moor. I and my pals spent hours exploring there and finding the wreckage of many wartime bombers that crashed in the bleak wilderness which changes constantly with erosion. I doubt if Brady himself has any idea where the bodies are buried.

Leave them in peace, with the soothing burble of the skylarks and the soughing of the wind in the heather.